A. The broader roles provide opportunity for career growth within
the employee's position. Career growth can be thought of as added
responsibilities within the role and band, rather than just upward
movement to a higher pay band.

Under the current system, career growth could typically only occur
through reallocations or through competitive promotions. Because
the in-band salary adjustment process in the new plan can provide
salary adjustments for increases in knowledge, skills and abilities
applied on the job, as well as increases in responsibilities,
employees can be rewarded for job-related training and development
without having to change positions.

Many
of the re-defined roles also include both supervisory or "lead"
positions and non-supervisory positions, which provide for career
progression into supervisory responsibilities. Employees will
also be able to move laterally (to a different role in the same
pay band) from one career group to another career group (the new
term for job classifications), which may provide additional career
growth opportunities. Employees will still have promotional opportunities
to higher pay bands through the recruitment process and role changes
(i.e., reallocations to higher pay bands). The career group descriptions
provide a "dual track" so that employees do not always
have to advance to management positions in order to grow professionally,
but could be rewarded for expertise in their field.

Q. Since the existing pay-for-performance plan was seldom funded,
why should we expect anything different with the new plan?

A.
There were several problems with funding the Employee Incentive
Performance Program. One of the problems occurred because the
current plan had fixed steps, which meant that the General Assembly
and the governor had to fund those fixed steps -- increases had
to be funded at 2.25 percent (one step) for "meets expectations,"
4.56 percent (two steps) for "exceeds expectations,"
or 6.97 percent (three steps) for "exceptional" ratings.
In most years, the state could not appropriate enough money to
allow agencies to provide the three levels of increases for the
three levels of performance.

In the new plan, there are no pay steps and the number of ratings
has been reduced, which will provide the governor and the General
Assembly with more flexibility to fund increases based on the
revenues available each year. This means that the new plan avoids
the problem that occurred where there had been a limit placed
on the number of employees who could receive certain levels of
increases.